Obscure
by Zeil
Summary: Tony's down by the seaside and its anyone's guess as to why. Slash.


**A/N:** On the first day of christmas my true love gave to me... A quiet little probie named McGee... On the second day of christmas my true ove gave to me... A coffee jonesing-Gibbs and... well you get the point.

Hey guys The first of my twelve days of christmas. I was going to put this up later but I'm too excited... It's currently 12.08 here... Yay 13th of December.

This first fic is dedicated to Adrian, who requested a Ari/Tony fic, with no tiresome explainations of how they ended up together... well I've turned the 'no answers' into kind of a theme... The timeline kind of jumps about and is off-kilter, hope that doesn't lose to many people, Enjoy.

**Also next up will be Lord Of War...**

Merry Christmas!

**Obscure**

_What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?_

_Gertrude Stein_

* * *

Cool air brushes over his ear and his hand swats at something his waking mind hasn't quite comprehended yet. The something is smart enough not to be within reach and the cool breath comes again. 

This time Tony stirs, hand tugging at a tingling lobe, he grunts disapprovingly, because he wants to sleep and the teasing lips will soon have him hard and if it comes to toss up between sleep and sex… Well Tony has learnt through careful study that sex will always win out, hands down.

A warm tongue sweeps across the shell of his ear and he squirms, his heartbeat, slow and steady from sleep flutters a little faster, blood moving to pool between his legs…

"Not fair." He panted rolling onto his back, Tony squinted out the window.

"It's still dark outside." Tony moaned, rubbing sleep from his eyes. There was a dusty pink tingeing the horizon, the sky starting to bleed into a lighter shade of blue.

"It's sunrise…" The other smirks incredulously, fingers dropping to toy with Tony's bared nipples.

"That happens at like 4.30 around here." Tony snaps groggily, gasping a little as the fingers pinch lightly.

"4.45 today actually, its 4.27." He informs coolly, dark head dipping down to suckle rosy flesh.

"And what you wanted to watch in rise with me…" Tony remains in that half-waking stupor by choice, flat out refusing to been conscious this early.

"Depends on what you're talking about rising…" He deadpans hand going to grope Tony's very interested cock.

"The sun…" Tony puffed disapprovingly through his teeth, thrusting up into the hard palm. The other snorts…

"I've seen it already… I wasn't impressed…" He says tongue dipping into Tony's navel.

"You'd better be talking about the sunrise…" Tony threatens and draws a deep laugh…

"Sure." The hand disappears and the weight that been pressing his side for the last few minutes evaporates as well. Tony crashes right out of his early morning daze a few seconds later.

"Oh, I hate you Ari." He huffs, glaring angrily at former Mossad agent, who's leaning oh so casually in the en suite doorway, brilliant white teeth put on display at Tony's statement.

"You have two hands… take care of it yourself." He smirks, dodging a little as Tony tosses a pillow at him.

"Or get up and have a shower with me." He offers, pulling his shirt up and over his head. Tony wants to stick his tongue out childishly and then pull the covers up over his head. Unfortunately, see before as above, sex wins out, always.

-.-.-

Ari sits down on the beach, stars bright overhead, surf lapping gently at the coast line. He takes the time to wonder about his half sister, the only family he has left to care about… and really he doesn't even have her anymore. So it's pointless to worry and wonder, but he has little else to do when Tony's kicked him out of the house. Well no actually, that's not right. Because not only couldn't Tony throw him out but Ari's pretty sure he wouldn't anymore, honesty he's starting to think its Stockholm's, possibly for the both of them. There's no other reason for why they stay together, not anymore.

That said every so often he still exiles himself, lest something drastic happens. They're too different to live with each other constantly like they do and Ari's learnt over time to predict when he needs to leave, has taught himself to pay attention, the memory of past violence enough to keep him focused.

How many fights had they had? How many bruises, stitches, how many trips to what passed for a hospital here?

Six for him, three for Tony… The last of which had been the worst, not surprisingly, he'd walked away with a concussion and 12 stitches across the back of his head, for Tony it was three broken ribs.

-.-.-

"We should open a shop." Tony says off-handedly as they stroll through the town, an empty store front looming up beside them.

"And sell what?" Ari questions, Tony shrugs.

"Bakery." It's amazing what you pour your energy into when you suddenly find yourself with absolutely nothing to do. Worse still when you've been trained not to sleep more than five hours a night, to watch how you use every second of the day and even worse when even after giving up everything, your still not free to do as you please.

He thinks maybe that's what Tony is sometimes, his one freedom, his one incentive not to take the 9mm that's stashed in the bedside drawer, remove the safety, chamber a round and eat a bullet.

"If you want." Ari shrugs, because Tony has never needed encouragement from him. If he wants to do something what Ari has to say on the matter, matters very little.

"It'd give you something else to tear up." Tony says, leaning into him. He drops an arm over broad shoulders, Tony's jacket soft under his fingers. He's never been one much for human contact before, but Tony quite likes it and Ari's learnt through careful study that because he feels guilty over completely fucking Tony's life, beyond repair, that he can't actually say no to him.

Besides he hardly finds the brunette as intolerable as everyone else and by now he's more than use to it, Tony's hands on him outside of sex and sparring no longer feeling like some abhorred violation.

-.-.-

"What are you doing?" Tony says, feet and chest bare, because a few minutes ago he'd been sleeping peacefully. Well almost peacefully, since his three broken ribs are giving him a little trouble.

"The floor… wasn't even…" There's a stack of polished boards at Tony's feet and Ari has a crowbar in hand.

"So your solution to this was to rip it up… at 2 am?" It's not really a question, more a disbelieving observation. Eyes tracing over the gaping hole, the dark sand beneath and the man who's thigh deep in the torn up floor, steadily working up more boards.

"Sorry if I woke you." He says off handedly. Tony yawns, painkillers leaving him with a sluggish, groggy feeling. He drops down to sit on the edge that the other isn't currently working at.

-.-.-

Tony scrubs down the windscreen of his car, breeze cool on his neck. The sheet of glass is or at least was pristine and sparkling prior to him sloshing soapy water onto it. Which, would make him odd, if this endeavor had anything to do with cleaning. He finds it cathartic rather, comes outside and scrubs down the painted and polished metal whenever he feels like killing what is steadily becoming his not so better half.

He rinses off the soap and thinks about doing some more body work on the shell of a vehicle sitting behind him. Its very male how's he's taken to fixing up cars instead of doing his job. But then again the obsession with baking tends to run towards feminine so perhaps they balance each other out. Though he's learnt through trial and error that the two should not ever mingle. Not when he finds engine grease in apple turnovers; well Ari finds… he had not been impressed. Perhaps it was a Freudian slip on Tony's part.

-.-.-

Tony shifted in the dark, curling around the pillow beneath his head, he sighs into the cool air, kicking the sheets from his legs despite the chill.

At 3.20 in the morning he can hear the other outside ripping rotting broads from the veranda. He's not going to get back to sleep anytime soon. Not until the other wears himself out, showers and comes back to bed. 3.23… he probably won't get back to sleep until tonight.

Tony wants to be bitter over this, only he's been that way for so long over so many things that it's gotten old. For the sake of peace they don't talk much about anything that happened before this, what bough them to his worn down beach side house.

So Tony can't say for sure what wakes the other at all hours of the night, its rare though that Tony actually wakes up next to him. Nightmares are the obvious answer, the right one… What nightmares though are anyone's guess.

Tony rolls over and pulls open the top drawer of the bedside table, removing his cell phone from beneath folded clothes. In truth he's not even sure it works anymore, it should, should still be almost fully charged… but who knows. After all this time it wouldn't surprise him if it's completely dead. He has another these days, one that he purchased by the sea, one that's slim and black. The one he's holding now is wide, flat and silver, not the last phone he'd ever purchased as an NCIS just the only one that had managed to survive his job.

All their numbers are stored on it… Dates, messages, appointments, everything of his old life right there in the palm of his hand… or maybe not. Maybe the sim cards long since deteriorated…

He wonders about them a lot, wonders if Kate's finally found the 'one'. Wonders if Abbey and McGee have tied the knot yet. The thought of McGee proposing which had at one point carried a very humorous edge now just brings sadness. Thoughts of Gibbs come with guilt, because he knows his boss will be feeling the same way about loosing an agent.

Tony hears the front door open and close and drops the cell back into the drawer, sliding it closed once more as the shower starts to run. He curls back around his pillow and a few minutes later the sound of fall water stops. He has no delusions about the other not knowing about the phone. He knows… he has to because he keeps his own.

The bed dips as Ari drops down onto the edge, water beaded on his back. He sprawls out, staring at the ceiling, completely stark and still considerably damp, body shivering slightly. Apparently the midnight workout hasn't helped, since Tony can feel apprehension dripping off of the broad shoulders. He moves to nuzzle a cool neck.

"Did I wake you?" Ari sighs.

"I was bored with sleep anyway." Tony lies, sliding a leg across Ari's cold thighs. Tony brushes light kisses to the dry lips as Ari pulls the shorts from his hips.


End file.
